Continue reading “Grounding Ballet: In Conversation with Adam Linder”Calling from a cab on the way to the airport, the Los Angles-come-Berlin-based choreographer Adam Linder talks to Liza Weber about his new work “Loyalty” and renovating in the ruins of ballet. Shown at the Tanz Im August festival from the 25 to 26 August 2022, “Loyalty” was performed in three acts just like any ballet but proved, on several counts, unlike any ballet.
Liza Weber
Blood, Sweat & Talent
Continue reading “Blood, Sweat & Talent”Watching the premiere of Florentina Holzinger’s “Ophelia’s Got Talent”, I was reminded of an essay I once wrote that, using Ophelia in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ as an example, argued how women were drawn in fainter lines than their male counterparts. Nowhere is this further from the truth than in Holzinger’s show, which takes a fat marker pen to her name and, indeed, the name of every woman that has ever lived in her wake. Premiering on 15 September 2022 at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, “Ophelia’s Got Talent” opened the season with a celebration of womanhood that shouldn’t be missed.
Sorry For Your Loss
Continue reading “Sorry For Your Loss”On the 11 September 2022, two contemporary dancers and a cellist came together in a collaboration called “Consolation”, which was performed at Dock 11 as part of the international festival for contemporary dance and music, soundance berlin 2022.
After “after aftershock shock”
Continue reading “After “after aftershock shock””Running from 27 August to 1 September 2022 at Berliner Ringtheater, “after aftershock shock” by Jingyun Li and Saori Hala is a multimedia dance performance that explores what it means to shake, but not necessarily be shaken.
Atunwa
Continue reading “Atunwa”In “Re:INCARNATION”, The QDance Company from Lagos, Nigeria, celebrated their German premiere on 14 May at Potsdamer Tanztage 2022 with a joy so infectious that the audience couldn’t help but giggle, applaud, and, when the dancers returned for an encore, answer their call, “Oggy, oggy, oggy?” with “Oi, oi, oi!”. It was as if the Hans Otto Theater had been turned into a festival stage and a song and dance had been made about the Yorùbá belief system in the cycles of life — of birth, life, death, and rebirth — both literally and figuratively speaking.
Coming Full Circle
Continue reading “Coming Full Circle”In “M.O.S.T”, an acronym for “My Ongoing Silent Transcendence”, which ran from the 15 to 30 April 2022 at the Pfefferberg Theater Berlin, dance company Chaim Gebber-Open Scene plots a timeline of events that chart, in the company’s own words, “universal and personal transformations.” As the choreography suggests, such transformations are not always linear, but rather cyclical in nature, where the dancers find themselves ending up much where they left off — with the ongoing silent transformation of the self.
Performing Decolonisation Is One Thing, Decolonisation Another
Continue reading “Performing Decolonisation Is One Thing, Decolonisation Another”In an interview with Jana Lüthje, curator of the participatory dance project Moving the Forum at the Humboldt Forum, the question of if, and how, the institution was implementing change proved inevitable and, ultimately, inconclusive. The third of its four chapters called “Inhabiting” ran from 14 Feb to 26 March 2022, with the final chapter, “Interacting”, set to span 2 May to 11 June 2022.
There Is No Return After War
They say there should be five acts to any tragedy: 1) Exposition, 2) Rising Action, 3) The Climax, 4) Falling Action, and 5) Resolution. But then, this in no Ibsen or Shakespeare. This is Sasha Waltz & Guests, and this is a symphony of four movements. Which is to say, there is no resolution to be found in “SYM-PHONIE MMXX”, which had its world premiere on 13 March 2022 and next shows on 18 and 19 March at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin.
Continue reading “There Is No Return After War”I Can’t Hear You, But I’m Listening
Continue reading “I Can’t Hear You, But I’m Listening”Would I write one of my _____ for the premiere of “Talk To Me”, I was asked? It seems to be the perfect form for a review on a piece that opens-up the question of _____________ and ___ __ _____________. Choreographed by Vanessa Huber in cooperation with tanzApartment cie., the dance ran from 10 to 13 March 2022 at Halle Tanzbühne Berlin.
Stop Following Me! I Need You
In “clair obscur”, a piece in the repertoire of cie. toula limnaios since Spring 2021 and performed at HALLE Tanzbühne Berlin, choreographer Toula Limnaios dreams up a disquieting and deftly executed dance of Doppelgängers.
Continue reading “Stop Following Me! I Need You”What Feels Like Our Last Breath
Continue reading “What Feels Like Our Last Breath”In “erSCHÖPFUNG”, which premiered at Theaterdiscounter TD Berlin 27-30 January 2022, Janne Gregor asked a host of professionals—from a boxer and beatboxer to a Krump artist and contemporary dancer—to push themselves to and, ultimately, beyond the limits of exhaustion, only to find…that they just kept on going.
I Thought I Could Find The Words
Continue reading “I Thought I Could Find The Words”The text that follows is not a review in the traditional sense, but rather what I would call a ‘concrete response’ to Ana Lessing Menjibar’s “Perpetual Archive”, which she performed at the Sophiensæle, 13 & 14 January, as part of the Tanztage Berlin 2022 festival.